Wednesday, August 02, 2006

A friend of Justin, T.J, who is a fellow Malaysian, bunked over for a couple of days, whilst waiting on transition to Sydney.

So last night, I was looking at my cook-book, and said

"Hei, why not let's make Loh Mai Kai for lunch tomorrow?"

So, I went online to Kuali.com and copied down the recipe.

First thing in the recipe. It states:

250grams of glutinous rice. Soak for up to 3 hours.

Me: I don't have a measuring cup. How much is that?

TJ: About one cup.

Me: How do you know that?

TJ: I do lotsa cooking la!

Me: You sure ke?

TJ: Sure lar!

Me: Hmmm...*if you say so*.

Scans the next ingredient in the recipe...

Me: Mushrooms?

TJ: We can use the dried shittake mushrooms I have.

Me: Sounds like an idea. I don't fancy eating that with Australian mushrooms yet....

Scans the list again...

Me: Chicken. I have chicken. That'd be right.

So I soaked the glutinuous rice overnight and asked T.J to wake me up at 9.30 the next morning....

Which he *Conveniently Forgot...*.

I came down at about 10am plus...and started grumbling something incoherent to him..who was still lying on the couch.

So I started on the rice.

I boiled the glutinuous rice, and cooked like normal rice. In the rice cooker *DUH*.

Next came the chicken....

Me: Hmmmm....I think the chicken is too over-frozen.

TJ: That's what you have freezer bags for.

Me: That's why I put it in the fridge. I can't be bothered separating the chicken into separate freezer bags.

(Hmmmmmm. But on hindsight, that sounded like a good idea....)

So, I started to *slaughter* up the chicken.

Since it was MaryLand Chicken, I decided to just cut out the thigh part, and keep the drumstick portion of it for chicken curry on another day. Then marinated the chicken for about an hour.

Later....

To cut the story short....

Then we fried the mushrooms with garlic. Greased a ceramic "dog bowl" and laid out the mushrooms out on the plate.

After the rice was boiled, I stirfried it with black soya sauce, pepper, cornflour and a host of other seasonings.

We put the chicken on top of the mushrooms, and then finally, the rice on top.

TJ: I think we have too much chicken, and too little rice.Me: Well, you said "one cup" what!

We found a stainless steel pot to put the ceramic "dog bowl" (as TJ calls it) in. The first time we tried cooking it, the water levels were too high. That's the problem when you don't have a steamer stand!

So we tried removing the water. I think we almost drowned the rice.

*FORTUNATELY*, we managed to remove the rice dish and remove more water.

However, the water levels were still too high.

Me: I know. We can use the straw!

(I found this for pearl-tea-sized straw and started trying to draw the water out).

Me: Hmmmm...bad idea.

TJ: That's coz the opening of the straw is too big for your fingers.

Me: Seems like it.

(Then we found some Subway individually wrapped in paper straws).

TJ managed to remove the water. by sucking it out using his own mouth.

*sounds like fun, huh?*

*I think he almost burned his tongue!*

Finally, the water was just the right level.

Actually, I kind of forgot that the water would evaporate away, until I checked on it later, and realised that it needed refilling...

40 minutes later......

TJ: Looks rather oily.

Me: Well. I don't care. I am hungry.

Even later...

TJ: Hmm....it might look oily, but it sure is *yummy*!!

Me: Heh.

It was a Success!!!

That I decided to cook it again for dinner.

TJ: You seow ja-poh ah???

Me: Hei. I am still hungry la!

This time I used 2.5 cups of rice. Less chicken. And 6 pieces of dried shittake mushrooms...